Nationally, it was shown as a Saturday afternoon matinée — as was typical for horror films at the time — and attracted an audience consisting of pre-teens and adolescents. The MPAA film rating system was not in place until November 1968, so even young children were not prohibited from purchasing tickets. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times chided theater owners and parents who allowed children access to the film. "I don't think the younger kids really knew what hit them," he said. "They were used to going to movies, sure, and they'd seen some horror movies before, sure, but this was something else." According to Ebert, the film affected the audience immediately: “ The kids in the audience were stunned. There was almost complete silence. The movie had stopped being delightfully scary about halfway through, and had become unexpectedly terrifying. There was a little girl across the aisle from me, maybe nine years old, who was sitting very still in her seat and crying...The embed is full-length and has a 1080p option in the control bar, to allow fullscreen viewing.
More than 40 years after its release, the film enjoys a reputation as a classic and still receives positive reviews; Night of the Living Dead currently holds a 96% "Certified Fresh" rating on the review aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes
27 January 2011
"Night of the Living Dead"
This is the original (noncolorized) 1968 version by George Romero, "selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Film Registry as a film deemed 'culturally, historically or aesthetically significant.'"
Its importance as social commentary (along with the original Dawn of the Dead) is often overlooked by those uninitiated and merely judging it as shock-cinema.
ReplyDeleteI didn't see this film until it made it to late night t.v. in a mostly unedited late-night showing. There in the comfort of my parent's home it scared the heck out of me. Zombie flicks still get to me like no other horror films can.
ReplyDeleteThe film redefined the word "zombie" and it's legacy is still felt in pop culture stronger then ever.
My father will not watch horror movies to this day because of how much this movie terrified him.
ReplyDeleteI saw this movie when I was 8 in the early 70s. A family friend took me and my siblings to a midnight show.
ReplyDeleteIt scared the hell out of me - I didn't sleep for over a week. 16 years later, I'm living in an apartment building in Vienna. I have a zombie nightmare and end up checking the entire apartment and the building to make sure that zombies are not roaming the hallways.
I still watch zombie movies, but prefer something along the lines of Fido or Zombieland (a feel good classic).
The original film is a classic in that it broke so many taboos and its style just made the everyday appear so terrifying.
I guess there's something primal in us that wants to be titillated and scared. If you want to see anything on par with this level of terror, just check out The Walking Dead series.
I would highly recommend "Shaun of the Dead" as an antidote.
ReplyDeleteI DID get my dad to watch "Shaun of the Dead" and he enjoyed it.
ReplyDeleteI saw the film at a drive in when I was ten. I live in the Pittsburgh area and remember hearing cheering whenever a local town was mentioned in the movie. At ten years old I had no problem with knowing it was only a movie.
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